Marconi The Man Who Networked the World (Audible Audio Edition) Marc Raboy Allan Robertson Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : Marconi The Man Who Networked the World (Audible Audio Edition) Marc Raboy Allan Robertson Audible Studios Books
A little over a century ago, the world went wireless. Cables and all their limiting inefficiencies gave way to a revolutionary means of transmitting news and information almost everywhere, instantaneously. By means of "Hertzian waves", as radio waves were initially known, ships could now make contact with other ships (saving lives, such as on the doomed RMS Titanic); financial markets could coordinate with other financial markets, establishing the price of commodities and fixing exchange rates; military commanders could connect with the front lines, positioning artillery and directing troop movements. Suddenly and irrevocably, time and space telescoped beyond what had been thought imaginable. Someone had not only imagined this networked world, but realized it Guglielmo Marconi.
As Marc Raboy shows us in this enthralling and comprehensive biography, Marconi was the first truly global figure in modern communications. Born to an Italian father and an Irish mother, he was in many ways stateless, working his cosmopolitanism to advantage. Through a combination of skill, tenacity, luck, vision, and timing, Marconi popularized - and, more critically, patented - the use of radio waves. Soon after he burst into public view with a demonstration of his wireless apparatus in London at the age of 22 in 1896, he established his Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company and seemed unstoppable. He was decorated by the Czar of Russia, named an Italian Senator, knighted by King George V of England, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics - all before the age of 40. Until his death in 1937, Marconi was at the heart of every major innovation in electronic communication, courted by powerful scientific, political, and financial interests, and trailed by the media, which recorded and published nearly every one of his utterances. He established stations and transmitters in every corner of the globe, from Newfoundland to Buenos Aires, Hawaii to Saint Petersburg.
Based on original research and unpublished archival materials in four countries and several languages, Raboy's book is the first to connect significant parts of Marconi's story, from his early days in Italy, to his groundbreaking experiments, to his protean role in world affairs. Raboy also explores Marconi's relationships with his wives, mistresses, and children, and examines in unsparing detail the last 10 years of the inventor's life, when he returned to Italy and became a pillar of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Raboy's engrossing biography, which will stand as the authoritative work of its subject, proves that we still live in the world Marconi created.
Marconi The Man Who Networked the World (Audible Audio Edition) Marc Raboy Allan Robertson Audible Studios Books
Brilliantly researched, this book shows Marconi to be, in many ways, the Steve Jobs of the last century. Marconi’s creation of wireless communication was the mother of all start-ups and his business model provided the template for our digital age. Above all this book tells a terrific story and is a wonderful read.Product details
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Marconi The Man Who Networked the World (Audible Audio Edition) Marc Raboy Allan Robertson Audible Studios Books Reviews
I know the Oxford University Press has an excellent reputation, but if they don't get in decent editors, I'm not going to put up with too many more of their publications. The biography is not particularly well-written, which is too bad, but errors such as "he returned again to..." By virtue of the fact that he returned, the RE part of the word means BACK or AGAIN, so there's no need to return again. It's like saying "descending down the stairs." The DE part of the word means DOWN, so no need to say down when you say descend.
In the pantheon of the modern world’s icons of science and technology names like Edison, Einstein and more recent additions like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates stand almost unchallenged. One name, however, “Guglielmo Marconi” is largely forgotten – does anyone know what he looked like; are iconic posters showing his hair in disarray sold at novelty shops; do we even know that his first name was Guglielmo?? Marc Raboy, a Canadian historian, has taken on the monumental and clearly necessary task of adding Marconi’s name to our “Mt. Rushmore” of technological giants of our contemporary age. And, by and large, with his hefty tome, Raboy succeeds.
Raboy skillfully traces Marconi’s family background from his birth in Bologna, Italy in 1874 to what we would call today an upper middle class Italian father and Irish mother, to his death mourned worldwide in Rome in 1937. As Raboy shows, in considerable detail, during those 63 years Marconi remade the globe by developing a system based of communication that replaced underground and undersea cables, with electromagnetic over the air waves that eventually moved from simple Morse Code to the radio broadcasting that we now take for granted. Raboy describes the remarkable story of Marconi with little formal scientific education while growing up in England who then at age eighteen began to study at the University of Bologna where he first learned of the recently discovered phenomenon of Hertzian Waves. Marconi intuitively recognized that these forms of electromagnetic waves could be used to send “wireless” telegraph messages. By the 1890’s, Marconi, building on some of the work of others, began conducting experiments that led to the first true and financial viable system of wireless communication. By 1897, because of lack of support and interest from the Italian government, he had moved his operations to Great Britain where he established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company that became the mainstay for his commercial and financial success. With experimentation that lengthened the distance the wireless telegraph messages could be sent, it was not long before Marconi’s company began to establish subsidiaries in other European nations and overseas. While Marconi received the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for his work with electromagnetic waves, it was not until the successful life saving transmission of messages from the sinking Titanic in 1912 that governments and investors were ultimately convinced that the Marconi wireless method of communication would soon girdle the globe.
By 1915, Marconi and his assistants began to examine the possibility of audio transmissions that, with the work of others, eventually would lead to the development of radio and planted the seeds for television broadcasting. As Raboy notes, while Marconi is justifiable credited with developing the first viable wireless telegraph system, it is his invention of the idea of a, “globally networked, mobile and wireless,” linked world that was by far his most important contribution and, as Raboy adds, this made, “Marconi . . . the central figure in the emergence of the modern understanding of communication.”
Raboy’s biography quite rightly focusing on Marconi’s technological and commercial successes also includes significant details about his marital and parental difficulties he had numerous affairs (some platonic and some not), needed Vatican approval to have his first marriage annulled; and was a neglectful father to his children. Most significantly, and perhaps the part of his life that keeps Marconi in history’s shadows, was his support in the late 1920’s and 1930’s of Mussolini’s Fascist Italian dictatorship that also included his support for Italy’s world-wide condemned invasion of Ethiopia. Raboy struggles at times to make sense of the contradictions between Marconi’s belief that radio technology would foster world peace while he supported its use in war by Italy and other nations. But regardless of this weighty and important caveat, Raboy has provided us with a remarkable story of the man who perhaps more than any other made the world we have come to know as our own.
A lengthy but interesting story. After reading this book I don't like this man. He reminds me of Steve Jobs...a person who I found very unpleasant. Like Jobs, his personal behavior was deplorable.
Finally--and nearly eight decades after the inventor/innovator's death--we have a definitive biography, the first in English. Authored by a McGill University professor, this nearly 900-page study covers every aspect of Marconi's long life, focusing on his wireless achievements. Raboy provides us, for the first time, with an impressively documented (about 125 pages of endnotes) assessment of just what Marconi accomplished--or didn't. This is a warts and all survey of the man, and to a lesser degree, his company which for years dominated the pre-broadcasting world of wireless telegraphy. The study's 36 chapters are divided among five sections Marconi as a prodigy, the wireless industry player, the patriot who hewed closely to his native Italy (even under Mussolini), the outsider (in countries other than his native land) , and finally the conformist. Raboy points out that Marconi made continual attempts to control his own story, making the writing of a modern biography that much more difficult. That the inventor worked in numerous countries also served to disperse the record of what he and his colleagues accomplished. Despite all that, Raboy has given us the definitive treatment of a central figure in the development of wireless and then radio. I strongly recommend it.
Great book. Everything you ever wanted to know about Marconi.
Good technical non fiction story
Very well researched, outstanding work of non-fiction.
As others have said, from a historical perspective - it's top notch.
With that in mind, it's a five star book.. is it "exciting"... no... not really but its history and informative !
Brilliantly researched, this book shows Marconi to be, in many ways, the Steve Jobs of the last century. Marconi’s creation of wireless communication was the mother of all start-ups and his business model provided the template for our digital age. Above all this book tells a terrific story and is a wonderful read.
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